Robert Rhodes, 52, killed his wife, Dawn Rhodes, at their home in Redhill, Surrey, in 2016 after discovering she had been having an affair with a work colleague. What followed was a calculated and chilling attempt to conceal the crime .
According to prosecutors, Rhodes devised a deliberate plan to eliminate his wife and manufacture a believable defence. Using the couple’s child, then under the age of ten, he instructed the youngster to ask Dawn to close her eyes and wait for a “surprise.” Moments after the child left the room, Rhodes attacked his unsuspecting wife, cutting her throat with a knife.
Rhodes initially evaded justice. In 2017, a jury acquitted him after he insisted he had stabbed Dawn in self-defence during what he described as a sudden and frenzied confrontation in the kitchen. He told the Old Bailey that his wife had “flipped like the Hulk,” claiming she charged at him with a knife and that her fatal injury occurred accidentally during a struggle. The jury accepted his account, unaware that the entire version of events had been carefully fabricated — and that a child had been coerced into supporting the lie.
Read Also:
A member of British Army has been killed in Ukraine
Police confirm ex-Ondo governorship candidate Akingboye was murdered
Man who murdered couple in their home jailed for life
Wanted Bello Turji’s commander, Kallamu, killed in Sokoto
In an effort to bolster his false narrative, Rhodes tried to persuade the child to stab him to imitate defensive wounds. When the child refused, he stabbed himself and inflicted a knife wound on the child’s arm, then coached the youngster to repeat a rehearsed story to police and emergency services.
For years, the deception remained intact. But as the child grew older and understood the gravity of what had happened, they returned to police in 2021, revealing that they had been “manipulated into helping Rhodes get rid of their mother,” Surrey Police said. The revelation triggered a renewed investigation.
When Rhodes was arrested again last year, he was overheard muttering: “I wondered if this would come back to bite me.”
Armed with new and compelling testimony, the Crown Prosecution Service invoked the double jeopardy provisions introduced in 2003, permitting a second trial for murder when fresh evidence emerges. At Inner London Crown Court on Friday, a jury found Rhodes guilty of murder, two counts of perjury, perverting the course of justice, and child cruelty.
He is expected to receive a life sentence on 16 January.
Libby Clark of the CPS described the child’s testimony as “profoundly shocking” and said it revealed the extent of Rhodes’s planning. “He exploited a young child before the murder, outlining his plan to make it appear as though Dawn had attacked him so he could claim self-defence,” she said. “This included Rhodes inflicting injuries on the child’s arm. He continued his web of lies for years. It is thanks to the immense bravery of the child in coming forward that Rhodes has finally been brought to justice.”
During the original trial, Rhodes — a carpenter — portrayed himself as a husband pushed to the brink. He told the court he and Dawn were planning a divorce after he learned of her affair, claiming she had attacked him at speed with a knife after discovering he had begun a new relationship with their former childminder. He maintained that he disarmed her and only accidentally caused the fatal injury while defending himself.
He had instructed the child to make the 999 call and then took over the phone to deliver a carefully prepared story to emergency services. Even while on bail throughout 2016 and 2017, he continued pressuring the child to “stick to the story.”
After Rhodes’s acquittal in 2017, Judge Michael Topolski QC remarked: “Irrespective of the outcome, this has been a great tragedy for all. There are no winners, only losers.”
Now, eight years after Dawn’s death, the truth has finally surfaced. Rhodes remains in custody, with prosecutors describing the case as one of the most disturbing examples of “calculated, cold-blooded domestic homicide” concealed through the manipulation of a child.
